How Hearing Better Helps You Live Longer

Everyone wants to lead a healthy, happy and long life by eating right and exercising. However, your hearing also plays a crucial factor in helping you live your best life. It equally impacts your lifespan. Hearing loss, just like gray hair, is among the things people accept as expected, especially with age. However, a Duke-NUS Medical School study reveals that hearing loss and health have a connection. Better hearing contributes significantly to improving your quality of life; emotionally, physically and socially. Here are a few things you should know.

How hearing loss impacts your life expectancy

Hearing loss, especially among older adults, leads to depression, cognitive decline and communication troubles. When it is untreated or unmanaged with hearing aids, it affects your quality of life and reduces your life expectancy. If untreated hearing loss occurs with visual impairment, it doubles the inability to tackle daily living tasks.

When one cannot connect with people through communication, whether socially or at work, it leaves them feeling left out. Also, the inability to perform to the maximum reduces their earnings and can lead to loss of employment. Some of these situations cause mental health issues such as depression and stress, leading to other life-threatening diseases like diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease, hence reducing their life span.

When you begin to uncover the causes of hearing loss, you realize the results make more sense. Tinnitus and hearing loss is tied to HBP and heart disease that reduces blood supply to the ears. Similarly, smoking and obesity shrink blood vessels needed to push blood in the ear canal.

How better hearing helps you live longer

1. It keeps you in control and alert

Better hearing plays a crucial role in keeping you safe and confident when you’re out and about. Imagine not being able to hear the hoot of a fast, oncoming vehicle or a train crossing. When you can listen to what's happening around you clearly, your spatial awareness opens up and allows you to be aware, distinguish and react to warning sounds for safety. When you're experiencing hearing loss, you are more likely to feel less confident and miss warning cues at home and outside. It puts you at a high risk of injuries and accidents.

2. Improves your social life

Better hearing keeps you socially active; when you hear clearly without limitations, you can engage in conversations and maintain connections instead of socially isolating yourself. When you have hearing loss, you find it easier to stay away from social gatherings, turn down invitations and become withdrawn. Staying connected to friends and family is crucial to your well-being and increasing your life expectancy.

3. It keeps you mentally sharp

Many studies link dementia to hearing loss, and by 2050, the World Health Organization predicts that the number will have tripled. Social isolation from hearing loss causes dementia in that it accelerates the shrinking of the brain while forcing it to take away energy from thinking and memory. With better hearing, you can reduce the chances of getting dementia and live a happy, healthy and longer life.

4. Better hearing keeps you happy

More than anything, better hearing allows you to enjoy the best things that life has to offer. You can engage with friends and enjoy listening to their laughter, music and nature, such as birds chirping and waves lapping. When you’re connected to the world around you, you become happy and optimistic about life, hence living longer.

How to manage hearing loss and live longer

Hearing loss impacts your life significantly, but you can do something to manage it and enjoy what life has to offer. Researchers prove there are various ways to address hearing loss and deal with it before it starts to affect your overall health. These are:

• Hearing aids: If you're experiencing hearing loss, an audiologist can customize BTE, ITE, or ITC hearing aids to deal with it effectively. Some of them are Bluetooth-ready and come with technology, such as cell phone, TV and computer connectivity to aid your hearing during entertainment.
• Nutrition and physical fitness: Obesity is indirectly related to hearing loss; it clogs your blood vessels, reducing the functionality of your ears. Obesity also causes diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease that are directly linked to hearing loss. After a thorough screening from your audiologist, they may suggest better nutrition and workouts for weight loss to reduce its impact on your hearing.

Hearing loss is slowly becoming a health crisis globally; it deters one from living their best life by exposing them to dangers and social isolation. Better hearing through treatment solutions such as hearing aids and simple lifestyle changes like eating healthily and being physically active can go a long way in increasing your lifespan. Learn more about the Physicians Hearing Center and call us at (334) 441-4090 to live your best life with the help of our qualified audiologists.